


Learn to Lie

by Low_Key_Loki



Series: Seasons of Love - The 30 Day OTP Challenge [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: I'm an evil fuck, Killing my best friend with my writing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:03:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Low_Key_Loki/pseuds/Low_Key_Loki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the prompt "Can't learn to tell the truth until you learn to lie."</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn2VYVhXN88">For your listening pleasure/torture</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Learn to Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Because I am an evil fuck and wanted to kill my best friend. ^.^; Lurve you. Don't kill me.

It really was true then. Words said by men at their most vulnerable were usually the truest. Loki had known this, of course, but as he stared at his lover from the shadows, it was brought back in a harsh biting light.

 

_Stark had always had a biting wit, but it always turned inward as he grew contemplative in the stillness of their sweating bodies wrapped around each other in bliss. It had been years and yet he still tensed when Loki touched the glowing reactor, so he made it his mission to just once fondle it lovingly while they talked without Stark acting as if even now he would rip it from his chest and leave him gasping on the floor to die, not in glory as Iron Man, but forgotten as an aged billionaire._

_So when Tony not only relaxed under Loki’s touch but guided his hand to lay it softly over the humming machine that kept him alive, it took him a moment to school the look of shock from his jade eyes, “Something on your mind, Stark?”_

_The corner of his lover’s lips quirked in the same smirk they always did, the one that questioned why after a decade together, he still referred to him by his last name. He never gave voice to the question, not anymore. “Life. More specifically mine.”_

_Loki pressed his lips to the center of the reactor, his eyes tipped up in askance, whether for permission or for Stark to continue, even he wasn’t sure. Something was… different._

_Stark carded his fingers through his hair tenderly. “Life really is amazing. There are just some things you can’t possibly appreciate normally. I never truly lived before that,” he gestured slightly at the device Loki was tailing a reverent finger over, “and never knew what was important before someone ripped it from me.” He gave a self-deprecating smile and kissed Loki’s forehead. “Hell, I didn’t even know love until it threw me out a plate glass window.”_

_There was something in his eyes that Loki couldn’t identify, something that made him squirm uncomfortably. “What are you trying to say, Stark?” He watched him carefully. He would know if he was lying. That was his forte._

_He was rewarded with a warm smile. “My life has just been truly beautiful. Flawed, yes, but anything of true beauty is,” he said softly as he stroked Loki’s cheek, emphasizing his point. Loki understood flaws. Stark had worked hard to get the god to see passed his own and find anything redeemable, but as Stark did with anything that was a true challenge, he succeeded. “All the more for having you in it, Loki.”_

_This pulled him up short and he glared at Stark, cold seeping into him, literally and figuratively. “This is starting to sound like a death bed declaration, Stark. I do not want to hear it.”_

_“Loki, I know we never discuss it, but you’re going to outlive me. Just swear to me, you won’t cry at my funeral.”_

The bastard had known and somehow had found a way to slip it passed Loki without a lie. Within a month of that conversation, the shrapnel that the reactor had been holding back for so many years finally made it to his heart. As it had shredding his, so too had it shredded Loki’s.

 

He stayed back from the rest of Stark’s friends until the very end. Everyone had left and all that was left was for his casket to be interred into the earth. Only then did Loki remove himself from the shadows. Not because he was unwanted, but because his emotions were for Stark only.

 

He rested a shaking hand on the exquisite oak that now housed his world. His skin, tinted blue, left a fine layer of frost. He was too far into his grief to hide his true heritage and he couldn’t for the life of him care. Icy tears fell from his crimson eyes as he laid a rose on the top of Stark’s casket.

 

“As much as you would deny it, you loved to be underestimated, didn’t you? I never thought you would be able to hide this from me but you,” he took a shuddering breath and continued in a broken voice, “you never lied. You omitted the facts and knew that would be my blind spot. There are not words for how much I should _hate_ you right now, but I can’t.”

 

He stroked a petal on the rose and watched the frost collect. It didn’t destroy it, but somehow added to its beauty, as Stark’s presence had to his own life. “My fa—Odin used to say ‘You cannot learn to tell the truth until you learn to lie.’ I thought he used it to justify his misdeeds in the name of his reign, but I find myself contemplating it now.”

 

His hand caressed the wood as he once had that beloved face. “I’ll lie to Thor, to your loved ones and tell them I fair well. I lied to you. It was the last lie I ever told you and I do not regret it,” he choked back a sob. “I swore I would not cry, but you are the only one worthy of my tears.”

 

He pressed a kiss to the casket and whispered the words that would forever be etched on his heart before he walked away, “I love you, Tony.”


End file.
